


lincoln park after dark

by honey_wheeler



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-05
Updated: 2011-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:59:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m giving myself a mani-pedi!” Kelly trills breathlessly. “The color’s called Lincoln Park After Dark. It sounds dangerous, doesn’t it? Ryan said I needed to be more serious and this is really dark polish, so-”</p>
            </blockquote>





	lincoln park after dark

**Author's Note:**

> Set after _Business School_.

There have probably been longer nights in her life. The night she told Roy she was calling off the wedding didn’t exactly fly by. But this one seems like it was twice as long. By the time she gets home she feels like she’s been awake for days and all she wants to do is crawl into her bed and never come out.

Her street is quiet when she pulls up. She can hear crickets chirping and the leaves rustling as she locks her car and heads up the walk and up the stairs. The sound of the television emanates from her neighbor’s apartment as she twists the key in the lock and pushes the door hard with her shoulder. It always sticks. She doesn’t bother to catch it before it bangs against the wall. There’s no one there to notice the noise anyway.

Her keys jangle as she tosses them onto the table in the hall and kicks the door shut behind her. She looks around the empty apartment, exactly as she left it that morning.

“Honey, I’m home,” she mutters, shrugging off her coat and letting it puddle in front of the door. It’ll still be there tomorrow morning to pick up.

The kitchen is gloomy, sulfur-colored from the street lights outside. She’s been meaning to get curtains but she keeps forgetting. When she opens the refrigerator, the light from inside makes a wedge on the floor. She stares at the contents for a few minutes before grabbing a bottle of wine from the bottom shelf. She drinks the whole thing before she even takes her shoes off. Then she convinces herself that the tightness at the back of her throat is a cold coming on, so she slugs a shot of NyQuil and falls onto her bed without bothering to change into her pajamas.

She wakes the next morning feeling like her tongue is wearing a wool coat. At least it’s Saturday and it doesn’t matter that she forgot to set the alarm and it’s already 10am.

After she stumbles out of the shower, she wanders around the apartment in her bathrobe. It needs a good cleaning. A fine film of dust coats everything; pairs of shoes are strewn across the floor like they’ve been multiplying while she’s away. The flowers Roy sent her for Valentine’s Day are sitting on top of the TV. They’re wilting already, the petals scattered in a loose circle around the bottom of the vase. She picks up the vase and moves it, leaving the petals there to circle nothing at all.

She kind of wants to call him. Even though she doesn’t _really_ want to. But it’d be easy, it’s easy with Roy, and easy would be so nice right now. But then she thinks of how she recoiled from his touch as they said goodbye last night, how she was terrified he was going to try to kiss her, and it doesn’t seem so easy after all.

Who she _really_ wants to call is Jim but that would be…well, she just can’t, that’s all. But the idea of spending the day alone, here in this house...she wants to get in the car and drive, drive until she’s in another city, another state, another country. She wants to drive until she sees the ocean, until she finds a sunny beach where she can bury her toes in the warm sand and forget about who she is and about the life she has back home. But she doesn’t want to do any of it alone. So she dials the only safe number she can think of.

“Hi Pam!” Kelly must have had the phone in her hand, because she answers before the first ring is even done. Pam holds the phone away from her ear. It’s probably just the aftereffects of the wine, but Kelly’s voice starts up an immediate, insistent throb in Pam’s temples.

“Hey,” she says. “Hi. What’s up?”

“I’m giving myself a mani-pedi!” Kelly trills breathlessly. “The color’s called _Lincoln Park After Dark._ It sounds dangerous, doesn’t it? Ryan said I needed to be more serious and this is really dark polish, so-”

“Hey, do you want to get out of town?” Pam talks over her. She knows from experience that once Kelly gets up a full head of steam she’s impossible to stop and it’s best to interrupt her while you still can. “Like, just go out and drive for a while, maybe spend the night somewhere interesting.” _Somewhere not here_

“Ooh, a road trip! Awesome, I’m in,” she says immediately. Pam would have had to think on it for half an hour if someone had called her with the same request. “Can Ryan come?”

“Oh. Kelly, I don’t know, I think-”

“Girls only, no, you’re totally right, that’s so much better. When do we leave?” Her squeal makes Pam wince and she wonders how long it’ll take her to regret this.

*****

Kelly’s waiting at her front door when Pam pulls up to the curb. She waves like she’s drowning before stooping to collect her bags. All three of them. Pam gets out to help her put them in the trunk.

“It’s only overnight,” Pam says as she tries to move her things out of the way. Kelly just chucks the bags in on top of them and slams the trunk. Good thing Pam didn’t have any art supplies back there.

“You can never be too prepared,” Kelly says as she practically skips to the passenger side door. Pam follows at a more sedate pace.

“Yay, road trip!” Kelly exclaims as they fasten their seatbelts. “So where are we going?”

“I don’t know, I thought…” Pam hesitates. “Well, I didn’t think past just getting in the car and driving. East, maybe.”

“An adventure!” Kelly gasps, clapping her hands. “We could go to New York! Or Atlantic City, just like that time on _Sex and the City_!”

“Sure,” Pam says and smiles, just a little. This will be a good story afterwards, at the very least.

“Let’s go where the wind takes us! But we shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers,” Kelly says, her face growing serious.

“No, probably not,” Pam concedes as she turns the key in the ignition.

“Have you seen the commercials for that movie, with that guy from Lord of the Rings going all crazy psycho on those people after they pick him up? You can’t trust people who don’t own cars, I’m telling you.”

*****

They’re in the middle of nothing, somewhere between Wilkes-Barre and Allentown. Pam’s mired in her own brain, Kelly’s singing along to her soft rock of the 70s CD. Pam thinks they’re listening to Bread right now, of all things, which is probably what’s making her think dark, horrible thoughts.

“What’s got you looking so serious?” Kelly wants to know. “Are you thinking about, like, global warming, or Anna Nicole Smith or something?” Pam laughs and shakes her head. More like Roy and Jim and terrible art and how she should just say _fuck it_ and go herd yaks in Zimbabwe since no one would miss her anyway.

“I was being self-indulgent,” she says.

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“A bad way,” Pam admits. Kelly makes an expression of distaste.

“You’d be better off thinking about global warming or Anna Nicole if you ask me,” she says, then sighs. “That poor baby.”

“Those poor polar bears,” Pam adds.

“Exactly,” Kelly nods, then digs the CD case out from under the seat. “Hey, do you have any Justin Timberlake in here?” The question, so absurd coming after the poor polar bears, makes something pop inside her and Pam starts to giggle.

“No,” she manages. Kelly doesn’t seem to think the giggling is weird. It’s like Kelly’s idea of weird is completely opposite to Pam’s idea of weird.

“We should stop and get his new one,” she declares as she throws the CD case into the back seat. “I bet they have it at those big crazy truck stops with the A&W counters.”

“Sure,” Pam shrugs, thinking but not saying, _if anyone listens to Justin Timberlake, it’s truckers!_

“We should totally get it,” Kelly decides. “And maybe a banana split.”

“Extra whipped cream,” Pam says firmly, and Kelly smiles.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Pam echoes, and smiles back and means it.

*****

They end up in a motel in some shabby little beach town in Jersey. It’s off-season so almost everything is closed except a dingy restaurant next door with an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, something Pam has no desire to try. They both order salads and ask for extra bread and giggle when the 17-year-old waiter loiters around the table and asks them what they’re doing later.

When they’re done, there’s nothing left to do but walk around on the beach and go back to the motel room. They kick off their shoes inside the door and Pam sits on the edge of the bed. The mattress is creaky and high; she can only just touch the carpet with the tips of her toes. Kelly grabs the remote and finds some movie playing, something with Sandra Bullock. Then she chucks the remote on the mattress and digs a small dark bottle of nail polish out of her bag.

“I only had time to do my fingernails this morning,” she says, wiggling her fingers by way of explanation. She plops down on to the floor and rolls the bottle between her palms. “Never shake,” she tells Pam. “Always roll it between your hands, like this.”

“Why?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking. She doesn’t really care. And she can’t even remember the last time she painted her nails.

“Air bubbles,” Kelly says, and twists off the top. “So what’s the deal with Roy?” She has her knees up to her chin as she dabs polish on her toenails. “Did you go over to his place last night?”

“No,” Pam says. “I mean, I could have.”

“So why didn’t you?” Kelly doesn’t look up. She grips her toes in her left hand to get a better angle, the bottle of nail polish wedged between her forefinger and her thumb. Her hand twists and the bottle tips precariously. Oh well. The carpet’s seen worse than _Lincoln Park After Dark._

“I don’t know,” Pam answers. “That’s not true, I do know. He was just…he was trying so _hard_ and it made me feel awful and horrible and like I couldn’t stand to be around him one more second.” Kelly nods understandingly, tilting her feet back on her heels and wiggling her toes in the air to dry. She’s still not looking up and it gives Pam the nerve to continue.

“I felt like he was reading a script or marking things on a checklist. ‘Show up: check. Admire art: check. Compliment Pam: check. Be sensitive: check.’ But he didn’t really…he was…he was too nice. He didn’t understand what was going on and he was just being…Roy, I guess.”

“Which is the wrong person to be,” Kelly muses, looking at her thoughtfully, and Pam can’t help it, tears well up in her eyes instantly. She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand. Kelly’s face softens and for a second Pam’s afraid. Of what, she’s not sure, but something. Then Kelly scoots over next to the bed, carefully holding her toes off the carpet.

“Here,” she says, reaching for Pam’s ankle. “Let’s give you a pedicure.”

“Okay,” Pam sniffles. Kelly balances Pam’s heel on her thigh, her strong fingers wrapped around Pam’s instep. Pam watches her dip the brush in the bottle, run it against the inside of the neck to get rid of the excess, carefully stroke the color onto Pam’s toenails. It’s dark red, almost black. Kelly finishes one foot, pulls the other onto her lap. Pam holds her foot up in front of her. The dark polish makes it look like it belongs to someone else. She likes it.

“Pretty,” she says and she sees Kelly smile. “Hey.” She waits until Kelly looks up. “Thanks, Kelly. Really.” Kelly beams at her.

“See? A pedicure makes everything seem better,” she says and pats the side of Pam’s calf comfortingly.

“Yeah,” Pam says. “It kind of does.”


End file.
